Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The VisionClimbers ascend a ribbon, 100,000 km long, strung between an anchor on Earth and a counterweight in space. Connecting Earth and space in a way never before possible, the space elevator will enable us to inexpensively and completely expand our society into space.

In astrophysics, a white hole is the theoretical time reversal of a black hole. While a black hole acts as a vacuum, drawing in any matter that crosses the event horizon, a white hole acts as a source that ejects matter from its event horizon. The sign of the acceleration is invariant under time reversal, so both black and white holes attract matter. The only potential difference between them is in the behavior at the horizon.Black hole event horizons can only "suck up" matter, while white hole horizons ostensibly recede from any incoming matter at the local speed of light, so that the infalling matter never crosses. The infalling matter is then scattered and reemitted at the death of the white hole, receding to infinity after having come close to the final singular point where the white hole is destroyed. The total proper time until an infalling object encounters the singular endpoint is the same as the proper time to be swallowed by a black hole, so the white hole picture does not say what happens to the infalling matter. Ignoring the classically unpredictable emissions of the white hole, the white hole and black hole are indistinguishable for external observers.In quantum mechanics, the black hole emits Hawking radiation, and so can come to thermal equilibrium with a gas of radiation. Since a thermal equilibrium state is time reversal invariant, Hawking argued that the time reverse of a black hole in thermal equilibrium is again a black hole in thermal equilibrium.This implies that black holes and white holes are the same object. The Hawking radiation from an ordinary black hole is then identified with the white hole emission. Hawking's semi-classical argument is reproduced in a quantum mechanical AdS/CFT treatment, where a black hole in anti-de Sitter space is described by a thermal gas in a gauge theory, whose time reversal is the same as itself.

In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is essentially a 'shortcut' through space and time. A wormhole has at least two mouths which are connected to a single throat. If the wormhole is traversable, matter can 'travel' from one mouth to the other by passing through the throat. While there is no observational evidence for wormholes, spacetimes containing wormholes are known to be valid solutions in general relativity.The term wormhole was coined by the American theoretical physicist John Wheeler in 1957. However, the idea of wormholes was invented already in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl in connection with his analysis of mass in terms of electromagnetic field energy.

The name "wormhole" comes from an analogy used to explain the phenomenon. If a worm is travelling over the skin of an apple, then the worm could take a shortcut to the opposite side of the apple's skin by burrowing through its center, rather than travelling the entire distance around, just as a wormhole traveler could take a shortcut to the opposite side of the universe through a hole in higher-dimensional space.

Born: 8 January 1942Birthplace: Oxford, EnglandBest Known As: The author of A Brief History of Time.Fullname: Stephen William Hawking

Stephen Hawking is considered the world's foremost living theoretical physicist. He's an expert on black holes whose stated intention is to unify quantum mechanics with Einstein's general theory of relativity, forming a single theory to explain the origin (and end) of the universe. Hawking, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, is the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time and something of a celebrity: he has made guest appearances on the TV shows Star Trek and The Simpsons. Hawking has suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) since he was a young man and is confined to a wheelchair.In 1979 Hawking took the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. According to Hawking's own site, "The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton."Further Reading

Stephen W. Hawking's work can best be approached by reading his books, which include Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics (1980); A Brief History of Time (1988); and Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays; Sources on Hawking and his work include John Boslough, Stephen Hawking's Universe (1985); Alan Lightman and Roberta Brower, editors, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (1990); Michael Harwood, "The Universe and Dr. Hawking, " New York Times Magazine (January 1983); Elizabeth Devine, et al., editors, Thinkers of the Twentieth Century (1983); David Blum, "The Time Machine, " New York (October 1988); Kitty Ferguson, Stephen Hawking: A Quest for a Theory of the Universe (1992); Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Hawking: Physicist (1994); Harry Henderson, Stephen Hawking (1995). See also Russ Sampson, "Two Hours with Stephen Hawking, " Astronomy (March 1993); Publishers Weekly (February 12, 1996; March 10, 1997); Michael Lemonick, "Hawking Gets Personal, " Time (September 27, 1993); and Robert J. Deltete, "Hawking on God and Physical Theory, " Zygon (December 1995); Stephen Hawking also has his own web page athttp://www.darntp.carn.ac.uk/user/hawking/home.html.

Earth

Earth is the 3rd planet from the Sun and the 5th largest planet in the solar system. It's about 4.5 billion to 5 billion years old based on radioactive dating of lunar rocks and meteorites, which are thought to have formed at the same time. It is estimated that only 1/8 of the surface of the Earth is suitable for human to live on, 1/3 is covered by oceans and 1/2 of the land is either desert 14%, high mountain 27%. The world's population is 6,804,623,519 as of April 23 2008. Hottest place: Al' Aziziyah, Libya 135.4 F (58 C); Coldest place: Vostok, Antarctica -128.6 F ( -89.2 C)

solar system

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: the 8 planets, their 166 known moons, three dwarf planets ( Ceres, Pluto and Eris and their 4 known moons) and billions of small bodies. This last category includes asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust. The inner terrestrial planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The outer gas giant ( or jovians ) are: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The 3 dwarf planets are: Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, Pluto is the largest known object in the Kupier belt and Eris is the largest known object in the scattered disc.

milky way

The Milky Way galaxy ia a barred spiral galaxy that is part of the Local Group of galaxies. Although the Milky Way is 1 of billions of galaxies in the obserable universe, the galaxy has special significance to humanity as it is the home galaxy of the planet Earth. It is extremely difficult to define the age at which the Millky Way formed, but the age of the oldest star of the Galaxy yet discovered is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old. The Milk Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, and is believed to be on average about 1,000 light years thick, It si estimated to contain at least 200 billion to 400 billion stars. The Milky Way has a thickness of around 12,000 light years

Canis Mafor

The Canis Major dwarf galaxy is classified as an irregular galaxy and is now thought to be the closest neighbouring galaxy to our location in the Milky Way, being located about 25,000 light-years away from our Solar System and 42,000 light-years from the Galactic Center. The galaxy was first discovered in November 2003 by an international team of French, Italian, British and Australian astronomers.

universe

The Universe is most commonly defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum and the physical laws and constants that govern them. Astronomical observations indicate that the universe is about 14 billion years old and at least 93 billion light years across. The event that started the Universe is called the Big Bang.

Albert Einstein March 14, 1879 - April 18 1955

Albert Einstein was a German born theoretical physcist. He is best known his theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence. Einstein recevied the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to Theoretical Physics and for his discovery of the law ot the photoelectric effect. He was born in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany and died in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Residence: Germany, Italy, Switzerland, USA. Citizenship: German (1879 - 96, 1914 - 33) Swiss: (1901 - 55 ) USA: ( 1940 - 55) Ethnicity: Ashkenazy Jewish. Fields: Physicist. Notable Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics ( 1921), Copley Medal (1925), Max Planck Medal (1929) and Person of the Century (20th) Signature